Wednesday, August 31, 2016

Let Trump be Trump. Buhleev 'im.

by digby

They don't really have a choice, do they?

Michael Tomasky has a good piece in the Daily Beast reminding us of that time when Mitt Romney backed off all of his wingnutty primary policies in the debates and Obama was briefly behind in the polls. He says Romney came up because people never believed the wingnutty stuff in the first place and because most Americans are decent, mainstream people he benefited from showing his true colors, however belatedly. Trump is different because his ugly positions are the real ones and decent people will not believe him if he tries that.

I agree with that. But Tomasky also thinks Trump's base is going to rebel if he backs off of his draconian immigration stuff even if he just hints at it:

[I]f they give Trump a pass on this stunning a flip-flop on the hard right’s core issue, these people are pathetic. My instinct is that they won’t, or enough of them won’t. None of these people will be Hillary voters, of course, but some may stay home, distraught that their hero caved into the very same dark forces he won their ardor by maligning. Illegal immigration is The Big Issue for the hard right. Has been for a decade. It was the No. 1 issue for Tea Partiers, despite much media misunderstanding about this; Tea Partiers viewed immigrants as a bunch of freeloaders.

If Trump drops deportation in his big speech Wednesday night, it’s hard for me to see how he doesn’t lose huge chunks of that base. Even if he speaks words something like “I’m not dropping deportation” but then proceeds to outline steps that smell like he’s dropping deportation, he’ll lose big portions of the base...

Honestly, I don't think so. They don't like him because of policy. They like him because of attitude. They're cheering all this blather about "helping" African Americans at his rallies and they don't give a damn about African Americans. They're all in.

Tomasky correctly points out that all those racist policies from the primaries are hurting him badly with college educated whites (as well as people of color, obviously) which is why he's attempting to "pivot." But again, it's hard to believe those folks will believe it. Trump's character and personality are not obscure. His completely over exposed on TV and they all saw what he was at the Nuremberg Convention in Cleveland. His fundamental grossness is clear to everyone. That's what his followers like about him. The question is how many of them there really are and how many people are going to vote on both sides.